Well, this is a curious place. There’s being in the middle of nowhere, and then there’s being in the middle of nowhere accessorised by a small housing estate and the crumbling remains of a former lunatic asylum. If it hadn’t been for my colleague Tony Naylor’s insistence that the St Mary’s Inn was more appealing than its sombre demeanour promised (it’s the asylum’s former admin building, and you can just imagine it populated by Victorian Nurse Ratcheds), I doubt it would have seen me for dust.
Northumberland’s rugged beauty is much loved by the sort of hardy walker and birdwatcher who likes a country park, a historic market town, tea and cake. The inn’s nearest town, Morpeth, offers all of these; special mention for the Peppermint Tearoom’s Bakewell tart, all almondy squidge and award-winning jam, the sort of thing that makes you feel like belting out Jerusalem. But you’d have to be a pretty intrepid rambler to wind up here, with its landscape of crumbling institution and diggers.
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